Fourteen years ago when I asked, "How can I make Halloween fun for myself?" I created the original Web of Fortune.
While the Web of Fortune has held up well over the years, usually we would lose a dowel rod or two during Halloween, so I got in the habit of regluing dowels before the wheel went into storage. With each repair, the itch to rebuild my spinning game grew stronger. I was aiming to make three big improvements: going vertical, adding lights and of course making it stronger.
I've been sketching plans for a couple of years, and finally the urgency of another approaching Halloween provided the proper motivation to finally build Web of Fortune 2.0.
What worked:
- Kept things simple and cheap. I bought a precut table top instead of cutting the circle myself, but all the other wood came from scraps I already had.
- I involved my son Jack. He provided better ideas than my original thoughts and did a lot of the work.
- Rope lights under the wheel gave a wonderful glow. Mounting the black light on top popped the glow-in-the-dark spiders.
- Used 20d 4" nails instead of dowels.
- Five inches off an old belt made for a heartier clicker than plastic from a milk jug.
- Relearned how to find the center of a circle. Love YouTube Learning.
What didn't work:
- Going vertical. The weight of the wheel was too heavy for the Lazy Susan hardware to spin.
- Went with a larger Lazy Susan hardware and it doesn't spin as easily as the old model - need to investigate best way to lubricate the ball bearings.
Web of Fortune 2.0 was well received by new kids as well as returners. We had over 180 trick or treaters stop by for a spin.
